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CHAPTER XXI

CHILDHOOD AND ADOLESCENCE

The importance of adolescence has been stressed for thirty years. There is a growing tendency at present to place the major emphasis upon the early years of child life. The readings cover the Recapitulation (2), Utility (3), and Correspondence (4) Theories of the Order and Dates of Appearance of Original Tendencies: The Periodical and Concomitant Development Theories of the order of development of mental traits (5,6); the Saltatory, and Gradual Development Theories of the influence of adolescence on mental traits (7,8,9,10).

Readings covering the behavior characteristics of the different levels of maturity have been taken from the writings of Baldwin (11), Judd (12,14), Hall (15), King (16), Tracy (17), and Whipple (19). The different theories of the moral nature of children are discussed in the selections from Keith (21,22,23,24).

1. Theories Purporting to Account for the Order and Dates of Appearance and Disappearance of Original Tendencies

Different original tendencies appear at different dates after the fertilization of the ovum which marks the beginning of a new life. Since these tendencies do not appear all at the same time and since they appear to persist for varying lengths of time, it was natural that certain theories should rise to explain the order and dates of their appearance and disappearance. The three most frequently mentioned the ories in this connection are, the Recapitulation Theory, the Utility Theory, and the Theory of Correspondence. It was Agassiz who first pointed out that there is a definite resemblance between certain stages in the growth of young

fish and their fossil representatives. From this observation he came to the conclusion that the phases of development of all living animals correspond to the order of successsion of their extinct representatives. Von Baer also suggested the view, but it was not clearly stated until 1863 by Fritz Müller. The theory was given considerable impetus in Germany by Haeckel, in England by Spencer, and in America by Stanley Hall and his disciples. The Utility Theory has found greater favor with Thorndike, whereas Koffka expresses a preference for the Theory of Correspondence.

2. The Recapitulation Theory

[HALL, G. Stanley, Adolescence, Vol. I, pp. viii, 160, 202-203, 215, Vol. II, pp. 70-71. New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1904.]

The Recapitulation Theory holds that the order of appearance of original tendencies in the individual is more or less exactly that in which they have appeared in the race (the entire ancestry of the individual) and that the intervals from the fertilization of the ovum to the dates of appearance of the individual original tendencies bear more or less exactly the same proportions one to another that the intervals from the beginning of life in the animal kingdom to the dates of appearance of the same tendencies in the race bear to one another. Even the most enthusiastic supporters of the theory contend that recapitulation is, however, incomplete and imperfect. The record may be thought of as a history with entire chapters missing, while those that remain are often misplaced or blurred. Hall has been the most militant advocate of the theory, in a more or less modified form, in America.

Holding that the child and the race are each keys to the other, I have constantly suggested phyletic explanations. . . . These non-volitional movements of earliest infancy and of later childhood (such as "licking things, clicking with the tongue, grinding the teeth, biting the nails, shrugging corrugations, pulling buttons or twisting garments, strings, etc., twirling pencils," etc.) . . . are relics of past forms of utilities now essentially obsolete. Ancient modes of locomotion, prehension,

balancing, defense, attack, sensuality, etc., are all rehearsed, some quite fully and some only by the faintest mimetic suggestion, flitting spasmodic tensions, gestures, or facial expressions. . .

The best index and guide to the stated activities of adults in past ages is found in the instinctive, untaught, and non-imitative plays of children. . . . In play every mood and movement is instinct with heredity. Thus we rehearse the activities of our ancestors, back we know not how far, and repeat their life work in summative and adumbrated ways. It is reminiscent, albeit unconsciously, of our line of descent, and each is the key to the other. . . . Thus stage by stage we reënact their (our ancestors') lives. Once in the phylon many of these activities were elaborated in the life and death struggle for existence. Now the elements and combinations oldest in the muscle history of the race are represented earliest in the individual, and those later follow in order. . . .

Very interesting scientifically and suggestive practically is another correspondence . . . between the mode of spontaneous activity in youth and that of labor in the early history of the race . . . during this early time of great exertion, sometimes to the point of utter exhaustion and collapse, alternated with seasons of almost vegetative existence. We see abundant traces of this psychosis in the muscle habits of adolescents. . .

As in the prenatal and infant stage man hears from his remoter forbears back perhaps to primitive organisms, now (at adolescence) the later and higher ancestry takes up the burden of the song of life, and the voices of our extinct and perhaps forgotten, and our later and more human ancestry, are heard in the soul."

3. The Utility Theory

[THORNDIKE, E. L., Educational Psychology, "The Original Nature of Man," Vol. I, pp. 252-254. New York, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1913.]

The Utility Theory explains the dates of original tendencies by the same causes as account for their existence-variation and selection. Other things being equal, the date at which a tendency appears is that one of the many varying dates at which it has appeared in our ancestry which has been most serviceable in keeping the stock alive. Thus sucking, though late in the race, is early in the individual. . . .

An advocate of the Utility Theory should not assert that

the actual order is in every particular useful (that is, more useful than a chance order); much less that it is the most useful order for survival that there could be. An order of original tendencies has to be very injurious if the individual possessing it is to be very frequently eliminated. For a better order than whatever order exists to be selected for survival, it must first appear as a variation. That is, the theory that the order and dates of appearance and disappearance of original tendencies

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are due to natural selection is subject to the same interpretation as the theory of natural selection elsewhere.

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As held by the writer, the utility theory of the order of appearance and dates of the original tendencies in human intellect and character is that the same causes which account for the origin and perpetuation of a tendency account for its time re

lations to other tendencies. Whatever makes the tendency happen at all makes it happen at some date and place in the total order of the animal's development. Whatever makes it vary at all makes it vary in its date. Other things being equal, the date which will be perpetuated will be that one of the many varying dates at which it appears, which proves most serviceable in keeping the species alive. Similarly for its date of disappearance. What the time relations of human original tendencies are, like what the tendencies themselves are, is thus the result of variation by whatever influences the germ plasm and selection by utility.

4. The Theory of Correspondence, and an Evaluation of the Three Theories

[KOFFKA, Kurt, Growth of the Mind (translated by Robert Morris Ogden), pp. 46-49. New York, Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1925.]

The Theory of Correspondence maintains that ontogenesis and phylogenesis are closely related processes. Since each has to do with the development of organisms, it is highly probable that certain general characteristics of development play a dominating part both in ontogenesis and in phylogenesis. In the concrete terms of Clarparède, "Nature employs identical means for effecting the evolution both of the individual and of the race." One may expect, therefore, that all the beginning-stages in any course of evolution will actually be of a similar nature, and that this similarity will apply equally to primitive levels, to more progressive levels, and even to the highest levels of development..

The points of difference between these three theories may be made somewhat more precise in the following manner. According to the first theory (Recapitulation) the inherited disposition upon which the development of the individual rests is so constituted as to include everything that was ever inherited in the preceding generations of the race. All these tendencies become actualized in a serial order which is essentially determined by the order in which they arose in the ancestral series. The individual, therefore, possesses every single possibility of reaction to its environment ever possessed by the race, and the temporal order in which these different possibilities are realized is in the main determined by the original order of their succession.

According to the second theory [utility] the tendencies are

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